Synthesis Editorial Director Daniel Taylor is out on the road as part of the Tooth and Nail Acoustic Tour, and will be blogging about his travels

Though technically four human complete human days, days three through six of the tour all bled together to form one epic-ly hellish van ride, interrupted occasionally by a show or thrilling game of croquet. After a 30 hour nonstop drive from Salt Lake City, Utah to South Bend, Indiana we met up with with the lovely Emery lads and our new homies in Ruth for the first official night of the tour. As expected, Emery acoustic is one of the best things ever. They played a few cuts from their forthcoming record, as well as some of their classic jams. They also took Q and A from the audience, and answered the question “Will there be more screaming on the next record?” about 30 times (the answer was, “there’s about the same amount as the last record, if not more”).

After the show we reluctantly returned to the van for the nine-hour drive to lovely Nashville, TN where former Chico legend, now Nashville legend, Trevor Sellers offered us safe hardbor for the day. I had my first experience of likely many, many Waffle House experiences mere minutes after our arrival. For those not blessed with living in the South, Waffle House is a chain of diners offering criminally cheap, disgustingly greasy and amazingly delicious breakfasts. A chocolate chip waffle and a double order of covered, peppered, and sliced Hash Browns and I was good to go. Tonight we play at Rocketown which is where I’m currently penning this entry. Thank God(s) for the internet. I don’t know how people got through touring before it’s invention. Maybe they actually practiced their instruments, or maintained their equipment or even, GASP, wrote songs during the 23 hours a day not spent on stage. Nowadays we don’t have to worry with any of those trivial things. We can just chat on AIM and LOL at cats and get sweet comments from wifey on Myspace. Oh yeah and play croquet…and fuck with dogs.

Synthesis Editorial Director Daniel Taylor is out on the road as part of the Tooth and Nail Acoustic Tour, and will be blogging about his travels

I’m starting to understand why touring musicians often have a unique sort of disaffection, offset occasionally by undue excitement over seemingly trivial things. For example, we were fairly excited last night by the fact that we were allowed, in lieu of any sort of real accomodations for the evening, to spend the night in a gigantic tent, set up in a parking lot for the purpose of selling fireworks for the forthcoming Independence Day. After having slept for literally tens of minutes the night before, in the upright position in a van whose back windows don’t open with 4 other dudes, the thought of having my VERY OWN wooden table to lay my sleeping back out on was enough to get me practically jumping for joy.

The problem with Utah though, is that even when you get a fireworks tent to sleep in, trying to find enough beer to make sleep actually happen is problematic. They only sell “real” beer in the state run liquor stores, which even in a city the size of Salt Lake City are apparently few and far between. These stores also apparently close before it’s even really beer-thirty. Stores and gas stations are only allowed to sell 3% beer, which as its name implies is beer with only 3% alcohol content. Imagine the shittiest domestic beer you can think of: Hamms, Oly, Schlitz, Keystone, etc. Then imagine it watered down, moreso than it already is. But its still beer I guess.

So far the best thing about Salt Lake City is this cafe with free internet that we’ve basically been living at for the past two days. Besides just being a hard place to find beer, SLC is a hard place to find a fucking coffee shop, probably because Mormons aren’t supposed to drink coffee or whatever. I think the people who work here are starting to give me the stink eye though. I brushed my teeth a little bit ago in their bathroom, which was the first time since we left Chico. I’ve taken a couple dumps already today, which were also fairly refreshing, since I’ve basically ate nothing but cookies for the majority of the last 3 days. And we’ve had five guys on their free wireless since about 9:30 AM, all off of two cups of coffee. So I guess I should market for them a little bit: if you’re ever in SLC, go to Just Add Coffee and sit there all day. It’s right by Guitar Center, so if you happen to be in a band its a good way to kill two days in an amazingly boring American Metropolis without spending any of your measely tour budget.

Anyways, I guess I’m also starting to see why most band’s tour journals are excessively banal and uninteresting. When all you do all day is try to figure out where to eat next, and how to kill the next 24 hours before getting in the van and driving somewhere for 20 hours or so (the entirety of which will also be spent trying to figure out where to eat next and how to kill the next however many hours until you get to wherever youre going) there’s not really a whole lot worth saying other than FUUUUUUCKKKKKKK.

All photos by Surrogate guitarist / Official Photobiographer Chris Armstrong. Check out his photo diary of the tour here

Synthesis Editorial Director Daniel Taylor is out on the road as part of the Tooth and Nail Acoustic Tour, and will be blogging about his travels

The thing I love about Nevada is, not only are there slot machines basically anywhere people congregate (airports, bars, gas stations) but that there are inevitably people playing them, no matter the time of day. I just watched a trucker pull 60 quarters out of a slot machine at The Flying J while we were gassing up the van in Winnemucca, at 5 AM on a Wednesday. Cheap thrills in sage brush country. Out here the speed limit is 75, probably because they got tired of caring too much about people. Wanna drive fast? Go ahead. Wanna waste your money gambling in a gas station at dawn on a weekday? Have at it, chief. Nevada people are like those kids in grade school whose parents would let them rent all the R-rated movies and ride dirt bikes and do whatever crazy shit they wanted. You envied them, sure. But you had a sorta bad feeling about them too, like they weren't really going to ever turn out to be worth a shit. And mostly you were right.

The towns out here seem to have a strange need to etch their monograms into the lumpy foothills surrounding their respective valleys, carving out their town's initials in big blue or white block letters. BM for Battle Mountain, a bizarre enough name being as the town itself sits flatly in a valley so craterous that it would seem to be almost below sea level. A mere triviality! The townsfolk themselves seem proud enough of the name, being as it is, carved into the westward hillside (perhaps the battle mountain?) in giant blue letters, marking for posterity the christening of this particular patch of scrub brush and ancient dirt as Battle Mountain, Nevada.

At the Flying J in Wells, a few hours east, a big sign above the doorway lets you know that day's Homeland Security Threat Level. On this particular day it was yellow. Exactly what level of threat that represents in unknown to me, as there was no primer, no key explaining exactly how threatened one should feel about each color. I guess the people of Wells know their threat levels by heart. After all, there's an awful lot in Wells just ripe for the threatening. For example, the Flying J in wells has probably triple the amount of slot machine as the Flying J in Winnemucca. Wells, Nevada represents freedom. It represents America. And that's what the terrorists hate. Freedom. America. They had Fox News playing in the lobby. I bought some Powerade.

By the time you make your way over Pequod Pass you might as well be on the moon. From horizon to horizon is nothing but an ancient desolateness that seems so foreboding, so ill suited to any form of humanity that you wonder what could have ever inspired anybody to ever bother crossing it, let along stay. In a late-eighties Dodge van, the bleakness has an almost zen appeal, with its stark, unapologetic simplicity. But from the seat of a horse-drawn wagon I'm sure there were many, less complimentary ways to describe. A historical monument at a roadside rest stop describes Gravely Ford, a popular crossing point for those heading west back in the days when West was the new East. It describes how two members of the ill-fated Donner Party got into a spat at Gravely Ford, with one man slapping another man's wife, and getting killed for the misdeed. The murdered was banished, only to later lead the rescue team that eventually saved the party from their cannibal valley in the Sierra Nevadas. It also describes a wagon trail who was slaughtered by Indians on the spot. One of the Indian women attempted to rescue a settler child but she was (chased for two days and killed.� The dedication on the plaque read (June 6008� which would seem like a typo until you also read the inscription at the bottom: E Clampus Vitus, that wily brethren of ersatz drunken freemasons, with their Chinese Calendar and gold miner oaths. There is hope for Nevada yet!

If Eastern Nevada is the moon, then when you reach the Utah border at Wendover you're on Venus, man. No wonder the Donner Party were killing each other by the time they got to Gravely Ford. I've never really understood what people meant when they said a certain so-and-so was (the salt of the earth.� Maybe they're talking about Wendover. The earth here seems to be made of salt, and that's about it. Some miles in the distance, some craggy promontories jut from the whiteness, but never actually meet the ground, as the heat and the nothingness of the air create a peculiar visual effect, making the mountains appear to be floating over the great expanse of salt. If I was a mountain, I wouldn't want to touch that shit either.

So today I leave on the above bannered tour, the Tooth and Nail Acoustic Tour, playing bass for my friends, the amazing Surrogate. Joining us on this cross country extravaganza will be the equally amazing Emery and our shared labelmates, Ruth (whose record is in stores starting TODAY, if you’re curious). I will be, of course, diligently blogging about the sites and sounds of the greatly underblogged middle portion of our fair country. As you can see in the dates posted below, this tour graces more than a few mysterious midwest Metropolises. Fargo, North Dakota? Papillion, Nebraska? Mankato, Minnesota? Can I get a Hell Yeah?! Or maybe a Heck Yeah! might be more appropriate. Anyway, more to come. In the meantime, get to expedia and book your travel to come see me on one or more of the following dates. I’m gonna be HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLA lonely without wifey………awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

Jun 27 2007
Solid Ground Cafe Salt Lake City, Utah
Jul 1 2007
Underground South Bend, Indiana
Jul 2 2007
Rocketown Nashville, Tennessee
Jul 3 2007
The Handlebar Greenville, South Carolina
Jul 4 2007
Murray Hill Theatre Jacksonville, Florida
Jul 5 2007
The Social Orlando, Florida
Jul 6 2007
The Theatre Montgomery, Alabama
Jul 7 2007
Juanita’s Cantina Little Rock, Arkansas
Jul 9 2007
The White Rabbit San Antonio, Texas
Jul 11 2007
The Other Side Tulsa, Oklahoma
Jul 12 2007
The Foundry Joplin, Missouri
Jul 13 2007
House of Bricks Des Moines, Iowa
Jul 14 2007
The Livingroom Mout Vernon, Illinois
Jul 16 2007
Club 3 Degrees Minneapolis, Minnesota
Jul 17 2007
House of Rock @ Playmakers Fargo, North Dakota
Jul 18 2007
What’s Up Lounge Mankato, Minnesota
Jul 19 2007
Granada Theater Lawrence, Kansas
Jul 20 2007
The Rock Papillion, Nebraska

Says some smart dude. I mean that’s cool and whatever, but the part of this article that really grabs me is this:
“There could be a way to test the new theory. The Large Hadron Collider being constructed at CERN in Geneva might just be capable of making microscopic black holes.”
Now is it just me, or is the idea of making black holes on earth kind of a fucking bad idea?? WTF?? Fuck science.

Having just watched Blood Diamonds last night, I actually kind of almost care about the bloodshed happening as we speak in Africa, for once. Thankfully, there are people in the world far more empathetic and altruistic than me, such as the folks at Champion Recordings, who recently released Fight Back Vol. 1, a compilation CD featuring Sherwood, The Devil Wears Prada, Surrogate and more, the proceeds of which will benefit Invisible Children, a charity fighting to raise awareness of and provide a solution to the ongoing strife in the continent of Africa. Tracklisting and details below the fold:

(more…)